This paper reports that between 2008 and 2009, unemployment rates across OECD countries increased among people at all educational levels, but rose to especially troubling heights among people without an upper secondary education. In 2009, the average employment rate across OECD countries was much higher for individuals with a tertiary (i.e.…

The U.S. economy has undergone dramatic changes in recent decades. Jobs that required limited skills--but still paid a family-supporting wage--have disappeared and increasingly have been replaced with jobs that either require higher levels of education and skills "or" require little education and training but offer no pathways to careers…

Since 2004, the devolved education systems of England, Scotland and Wales have introduced initiatives to increase contact between employers and young people, particularly aged 14-19, as a supplementary, co-curricular activity within mainstream education. The initiatives are motivated partly to increase wage-earning potential but studies to date…

Competing explanations for youth unemployment (demography, minimum wages, education and training, economic conditions) have profoundly different implications for policy. The history of youth unemployment in Australia and the United States is explored and the causes of the problem as well as some solutions are evaluated. (LC)

Examines relationship between overeducation and enterprise-related schooling, using data from a 1983 Dutch study of 43-year-old employees. Correctly allocated workers have the highest probability of participation in enterprise-related schooling, whereas undereducated workers have the lowest probability. The average rate of return on a year of…

An important part of the strategies for reducing youth unemployment in Australia and the United States is to improve the education and training of young persons, especially those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. However, this approach fails to recognize that youth unemployment is also caused by the demographic bulge of youth entering the…

Advanced industrial economies face a work crisis in creating wage employment in a changing job market without greatly increased job inequality. There is a fundamental conflict between a deregulatory labor-market philosophy and policies intending to use educational expansion to increase employment with higher productivity and wages. Education and…

Observations of schools and the economies of various countries and regions (including the Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, and the United States) suggest that the following generally accepted principles may be called hoaxes: (1) great numbers of new emerging jobs of the future will require much higher skill levels for workers; (2)…

The question of whether inequality in skills explains inequality of earnings across advanced countries was examined through a review of data from the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), which examined the prose, document, and quantitative literacy skills of adults in 12 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and…

This serial is in four sections. Part 1--Features: "American Social Policy"; "A Generational Perspective on Young Adults"; "Rising Income Inequality and Poverty"; "A Victim of Policy Neglect? 'Wealth Inequality'"; "Balancing Growth with Economic Equality"; "Economic Inequality: 'A Comparative…

This proceedings contains the texts of 5 invited papers and 28 refereed papers. The following are among the papers included: "Consumer Interest in the 1990's and Beyond" (Turner); "Esther Peterson and the Consumer Movement" (Galbraith); "The Public's Right to Government Information" (English); "Partnerships in…

This collection of papers on the youth employment problem consists of 15 papers that cover the dimensions, causes, and consequences of youth unemployment and that also focus on problems in measuring the extent of the problem, the dynamic aspects of youth labor force participation, and problems associated with adequately assessing the consequences…

The relationship between literacy, numeracy, and employability was examined by analyzing data on basic skills that were collected in two of Great Britain's birth cohort studies--the National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study. The functional literacy and numeracy skills of samples of 10% of the participants in each study…

The rhetoric surrounding career education programs was examined by exploring two questions. The first question was which employment sectors anticipate significant job growth and what skill levels and academic competencies were required to work within those sectors. The second question was whether increasing the level of student knowledge and skill…

This book, which is designed for undergraduate-level students in economics and industrial relations, attempts to synthesize the literature in the field of training for employment in Western Europe and the United States. In part 1, the principles of human capital theory are used to explain many labor market phenomena in terms of rational choices…